I want to focus in my remarks on two notions that are central to the rhetoric with which the current crisis at Columbia has been described: ‘grievance’ and ‘balance’.

This crisis at Columbia came about because some students claimed to have a grievance against the behaviour of certain professors in the Middle East Studies Dept. So let me begin by saying something about the notion of grievance. To say someone has a ‘grievance’ does not just mean that he or she feels aggrieved. A grievance is not just a feeling. It is a feeling that is merited or warranted by some thing that is done to one. This idea that the feeling should be merited’ or ‘warranted’ by some real grounds is not a cancelable aspect of what is genuinely to be called a ‘grievance’. Any one can go around feeling aggrieved, but that does not mean that the person is properly said to have a ‘grievance’. For instance, if the feelings are neurotic, one would say someone is aggrieved but not that he has a grievance. Now, neurosis is not the only grounds for dismissing the idea that there is a genuine grievance. Here is another ground for dismissing it: If the feelings are instrumentally invoked for political purposes, then it is precisely not a genuine grievance.

What has been happening at Columbia in the last many weeks is clearly a case of ‘grievances’ being instrumentally created to promote a political agenda. Put most generally, the agenda is one of McCarthy style groups outside of Columbia which monitor universities with a view to creating a kind of publicity that would cow university administrators from standing up in an unqualified way for principles of academic freedom for fear of losing donors. This seems to have initially succeeded at Columbia to a far greater extent than one would have hoped. But it will not succeed in the end, if we find sensible, sober, and effective ways of countering it, through effective responses that are not just demagoguish grandstanding but thoughtful, analytical responses given the widest possible publicity on campus and beyond through whatever means possible. Jonathan Cole’s excellent lecture on the subject is a very good start for what needs to be done. The present meeting is another good example of such public deliberation. There should be others with less speechifying and more dialogue, especially with students.

One of the standard tactics of McCarthy style groups that target universities is to throw dirt at people who hold the views that these groups are afraid will get a public airing and gain generally sympathy. I think I heard Chomsky once describe it with the Yiddish word, ‘schmutz’. The idea is to sling as much dirt or ‘schmutz’ as they can find, hoping that even when investigative committees set up to find out the facts discover nothing of any significance, something will nevertheless stick, on the principle that ‘where there is smoke, there must be fire.” So they hope that the report of the ad hoc grievance committee will, at the every least, be viewed by many as having this sort of residual effect. And if it does not, there will be an engineering of more ‘grievance’, this time against the report itself.

Whatever one thinks of the highly doubtful wisdom of the committee’s formation and existence, or of the fact that it came to conclusions about Massad on the basis of highly conflicting evidence without stating its grounds for assessing the evidence in the way it did, its report nevertheless did manage to achieve one or two very worthwhile things.

First of all, it firmly repudiated the idea that there is any anti-Semitism on campus. Second, it brought to light that there are outside forces which are interfering in the normal running of certain classes by their presence and trying to intimidate students and faculty from expressing their views, and the report took a clear and unqualified stand against this utterly insidious phenomenon. These conclusions it articulated explicitly. And though it did not make the connection, the conclusions are actually closely linked. These McCarthyite groups –as I insist on calling them-- are perfectly aware of the fact there is no anti-Semitism at Columbia. Their concern has never been with anti-Semitism at all. That is just a façade to mobilize some students and mislead the public. Their concern is only with blotting out any opposition to Israeli Govt policy, even if it means, instrumentally creating among students, so called ‘grievances’, for these purposes.

Some other conclusions are not drawn explicitly in the report itself, which is a shame, but any reader of average intelligence can come to these conclusions on the basis of what the report does say explicitly. For one thing, it is clearly implied by the fact that Professor Joseph Massad allowed unregistered people to sit in on his classes and allowed them to raise questions expressing a point of view different from his, that he was not interested in keeping out points of view different from his, as was being suggested by those trying to defame him. Moreover, if we put together the report’s disapproval of the disruptive role of outside elements in the classes with its disapproval of Professor Massad’s alleged objectionable remark asking a student to leave the class, we can see the report as having situated and contextualized what it disapproved of in Prof. Massad’s alleged remark. It was a remark (if it really was made by him) which was made in the context of a line of questioning done in a general ethos of outside interference, monitoring what he and others with his point of view said --and this external presence was there with a view to encouraging constant and vociferous opposition in the class to Professor Massad’s views. So contextualized, a Professor’s alleged remark can be seen as a sign of exasperation, and so even if one were to disapprove of it, one can recognize that it lacks the quality of intimidation that was initially being attributed to Professor Massad’s classroom manner. The report carefully read merely disapproves of an alleged lack of decorum on his part. That is a far cry from the sorts of things that were being said of Professor Massad before the report came out.

The report also sensibly did not take up the issue of what should be taught in these classes, saying that such curricular matters are entirely outside of anyone’s jurisdiction except those who are experts in the relevant field. The general complaint of the McCarthyite forces trying to control what is taught at Columbia and other universities, especially when it comes to topics in recent Middle East politics is that there is not enough balance in these courses. So let me say something now about the notion of balance. The right and obvious and banal response to this complaint has to be that the primary point of education is to try and present the truth by presenting evidence and argument for it. If ‘balance’ has any role to play, it is nested within this primary goal, not something independent of this goal. So within this primary goal, the only thing that ‘balance’ could mean is that one must look at all the evidence that is available to one. It cannot possibly mean the idiotic thing that some people seem to think it means, i.e., the equal presentation of two contradictory views. No educator with any minimal rationality would do that on the elementary grounds that if there are two contradictory views, only one can be right. Of course if she cannot make up her mind on the evidence as to which one is right, she might present the case for both views even- handedly. But presumably this sort of undecidedness is an occasional phenomenon and so it cannot be put down as a requirement for professors and educators. So the constant demand that we always present both sides of a disagreement presupposes a conception of education as a sort of perpetual and chronic dithering. It is far more sensible to say that ‘balance’ means that an educator presents an all-things-considered judgement after looking at all the available evidence. As I said, this is point is so obvious that it should go without saying, but since it has apparently not done so, I am stating the obvious.

However there is a less obvious point to be made. The McCarthyite groups do not just monitor what goes on in classrooms. They try and influence and restrict and throw dirt at what is said in forums outside the classroom in conferences and other public lectures and meetings as well ---and one of the alleged incidents around Prof Massad mentioned in the report is supposed to have happened at a site off campus in some public meeting. Now, when classroom curriculum is not the issue but the nature of political debate in general outside of the classroom is what is in question, there are perfectly good reasons why the views one expresses can and often should be imbalanced.

Let me explain.

I can find it quite understandable, indeed I find it honourable, if someone speaking and writing in America finds it important to stress much more the wrongs of the American Government and its allies and clients, like Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia under Suharto, Chile under Pinochet, and so on an on. But if the same person was speaking or writing, say, in Arab newspapers or in the Palestinian territories, it would be far more effective and honourable if he were to criticize the Palestinian authorities or Arab regimes like Sadaam’s or Islamic regimes like Iran’s and so on. Edward Said showed exactly this honourable imbalance, criticizing Israel and the US while living here and criticizing Arafat and the Palestinian Authority in the Arab press. It is said that whenever Sakharov criticized the Soviet Union’s imprisoning and elimination of dissidents through the fifties he was chastised by his government for showing an imbalance and not saying anything against the monstrous things that were happening in the American South against blacks. That is precisely the kind of imbalance that courageous people are going to be accused of by McCarthyite elements in this country, and I hope that all of us will have the courage to continue being imbalanced in just this way. It is in some ways the duty of the intellectual to be imbalanced in this way. That is another way of saying that it is the duty of the intellectual to be unpopular. They should not be discouraged by such unpopularity. They should see it as an indirect acknowledgement of their courage. I am sure that Professor Massad who finds himself unpopular today is perfectly aware of this, but all the same I want to take this chance to wish him more of the courage that I know he has.